Trump rejects conservatism. He rejects free trade. He rejects property rights. He rejects the rule of law. He rejects limited government. He advocates a presidency a thousand times more imperial than the one that sprung Athena-like from the brow of Barack Obama and his lawyers. He meditates merrily upon the uses of political violence and riots, and dreams of shutting down newspapers critical of him. He isn’t a conservative of any stripe, and it is an outright lie to present him as anything other than what he is. What he is is the embodiment of the democratic passions that kept John Adams up at night. Trumpkin democracy is the democracy that John Adams warned us about…The constitutional architecture of these United States is designed to prevent democratic passion from prevailing. Have your talk-radio temper tantrum. Have your riots. Our form of government, even in its current distorted state, was designed to handle and absorb your passions. You may dream of a dictator, but you will not have one.

Mohamad Jamal Khweis — the 26-year-old American who had been serving with ISIS until earlier this week, when he was detained while trying to quit — explained on Kurdish TV today that living with the architects of the caliphate was no fun at all. “Our daily life was prayer, eating, and learning about the religion for eight hours,” he said. “”It was pretty hard to live in Mosul. It’s not like the Western countries … There’s no smoking.”

According to two sources familiar with the call, which took place in November, the Trump campaign, citing security concerns from Secret Service, dictated to the networks that their camera crews could only shoot Trump head-on from a fenced-in press pen. Under the Trump campaign’s conditions, camera crews would not be able to leave the press pen during Trump’s rallies to capture video of audience reactions, known in the industry as “cutaway shots” or “cuts.” Networks would also not be able to use a separate riser set up to get cutaway shots. The terms, which limit the access journalists have to supporters and protesters while Trump is speaking, are unprecedented, and are more restrictive than those put on the networks by the White House or Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which has had Secret Service protection for its duration.

“’But Leon,” say a bunch of people who are interested in the Republican party winning just for the sake of winning. “If enough people take this approach, then Hillary will win!’ I’m sure she will, and that’s not my fault. I find Donald Trump to be unqualified, unfit for office, repugnant, and a tyrant in waiting, so I won’t vote for him. The end. If you’re looking for someone to blame, maybe you should take a look at Trump. Maybe you should blame Trump for utterly failing to study anything pertaining to foreign policy for nine months. Maybe you should blame Trump for any number of the insane policy positions he’s taken which would make any serious person realize that he is unfit to hold the office. Maybe you should blame Trump for saying that if he got elected, he’d rewrite the First Amendment so that he could sue the press every time they wrote something mean about him. Maybe you should blame Trump for his open admiration for the leadership style of every tin-pot despot on the planet. Maybe you should blame Trump’s voters who overlooked all this and forced Trump as the nominee even though people like me have been saying from the start that we would never vote for him.”